The invention relates to an electronic system, an interface, an integrated circuit chip with an interface, an electronic system, a method of sending or receiving a signal in an electronic system, and a data transmission method.
In conventional electronic systems, individual system modules, for instance various electronic assemblies, various integrated circuit chips installed on an individual electronic assembly, or various sub-components provided on one and the same integrated circuit chip, etc. communicate via a transfer medium—for instance a bus system.
A bus system may consist of one or more transfer lines. Bus systems, for instance a corresponding chip-internal bus system, a bus system provided on an individual electronic assembly including several integrated circuit chips, etc. can be jointly used by several, in particular by two or more than two system modules (sub-components of an integrated circuit/integrated circuits/electronic assemblies, etc.).
Further, a bus system e.g., may include several partial systems, for example a data bus, an address bus, and a control bus. The data bus—consisting of one or more data lines—may be used for the transfer of the actual payload data, the address bus—consisting of one or more address lines—for transferring address data, and the control bus—consisting of one or more control lines—for transferring control data, etc.
For the receipt and/or sending of data via a respective bus system, respective interfaces are provided at the respective system module (e.g., the respective integrated circuit/electronic assembly, etc.).
An interface may include one or several transmitters for the sending of data, and/or one or several receivers for the receipt of data.
The interface e.g., is connected e.g., via respective pins or pads to the bus system.
In general, a low pin count/pad count is desirable.
Conventionally, UARTs (UART=Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter) have been used for low pin-count data communication. UARTs e.g., allow for point-to-point data links in simplex mode, duplex mode, or half-duplex mode. In general, in UART connections, no clock signal is transmitted. Thus, precise timing references (e.g., respective crystal clocks) are required for both transmitters and receivers.
Further, in low pin count applications, an I2C-Bus is used. The I2C-Bus specifies two signal lines, one clock line, and one data line.
For these and other reasons, there is a need for the present invention.